“But I wish to say,” continued Dicky, “that I am here also to administer the sacraments to those of our religion who have long been deprived of them, especially the poorer people about Egremont. As long as our family was in possession of the estate, the few poor families who are of our religion were protected by the lords of the manor. But now, for near eight years they have been like sheep without a shepherd. I do not think the danger for me very great. In one quarter of Devonshire my name is a safeguard. I think no young gentleman in that county was as great a favorite with the common people as my cousin Roger. None of them would betray me, no matter how hot Protestants they are. If you can communicate with Tom Hawkins the fiddler, at the house of David Hodge, shoemaker, in the village of Egremont, you will find a willing servant of the King.”
“I have the name in my pocket-book, and I will not forget you, Tom Hawkins. And you have mine, Mr. Calthorpe, at the Globe tavern in Hatton Garden. Good-bye. May God prosper you.”
“The same to you, my Lord Duke. Adieu.”
Dicky walked on in the darkness until he reached a place of entertainment of the humbler class, a considerable distance from Bow Street. A few tunes on his fiddle got him a bed and supper,—he had money, but was wary of showing it,—and after playing for the revellers for an hour, he was glad to tumble in to a flock bed and sleep,—the sweetest sleep, he thought, he had had since he had left his native country, now more than nine years before.
There was ever a flame of adventure in the blood of the Egremonts; for Dicky, priest that he was, found himself perfectly happy when, next morning, he trudged out of London toward the sweet country, with his bag on his back, and his fiddle in his hand, albeit he was without a place to lay his head, and it was death for him to be on English soil. It was likewise felony to harbor a Jesuit; therefore Dicky had privately resolved to learn to live out-of-doors, so as to jeopardize as few lives as possible.
He walked on all that day, keeping the highroad to the southward, and stopping at half a dozen houses of entertainment, where he made his darling fiddle sing. He was careful to play only English tunes, or to give English names to the French ones he played, for he had no mind to let any one suspect that he was lately from France. While it was true the body of the people at that time were groaning under the taxation imposed by William’s wars, and were therefore extremely friendly to the Jacobites, yet the superstitious fear of the Jesuits still prevailed. Dicky Egremont, stout Englishman that he was, would have had short shrift had his real calling been known.
It was mild for the season, and being out in God’s free air all day was solid happiness to Dicky, who had been cooped up between walls, with books chiefly for company, during nearly ten whole years. He was so joyous in spirit that he wished to dance and sing as well as play. As he walked along the highroad toward noonday, he saw, down a little lane, some laborer’s cottages. A dozen bare-legged children were playing before the doors. Dicky, who loved children, went toward them, and smiling ran his bow across the strings of his violin. The children stopped, awed for a moment, but when he began to play “Green Sleeves,” and to sing the song as he played, they came about him in open-mouthed delight. Then one little urchin was moved to dance, and Dicky, by way of encouraging the others, began to do the most beautiful steps, playing meanwhile. At that all the little ones fell to dancing, the urchin who had opened the ball seizing the forepaws of a meek-looking dog, and whirling him around madly. Dicky played faster and faster; his fingers wandered into that favorite air he had so often played to Bess Lukens’s singing, “Les Folies en Espagne.” The sweet, rippling music brought the mothers to the cottage doors, who stopped from their daily toil long enough to smile at the merry young fiddler, who had such girlish dimples in his cheeks and who was dancing so gayly, stopping sometimes to prod the impertinent urchin who danced with the dog, when the poor animal was being whirled around too fast and barked piteously.
When the children stopped dancing, and sat down panting, Dicky stopped playing, and only then. A woman came out and very civilly brought him a bowl of milk and some brown bread. Dicky devoured both with the greatest relish. Not all the dainties he had even seen in France tasted like that English bread and milk; it was like that he used to have at Egremont when he was a little lad.
Presently it was time to take the road again; for he was anxious to be in Devonshire as quickly as possible. The children followed him to the highroad, and after he had played them a parting tune he went upon his way. He had scarcely gone a hundred yards, when the boy with the dog came running after him.
“Here, sir,” he said; “my daddy has told me I must get rid of Bold; we can’t feed ’im, and I’ll give ’im to you if you’ll take ’im.”